“Yeah, if they get him. Well, let’s be going. I wish I’d brought a tomahawk with me!”
Having uttered this altruistic thought, Osceola slithered off through the undergrowth very much in the same manner that a snake travels through long grass, and Bill, perforce, went after him. Presently the young Indian Chief stood up. The gate in the fence and its sentry were no longer in sight. Both lads climbed the high wire and dropped inside to the ground. Osceola took the lead again, and set off through the trees at a smart trot. When it came to woods-craft, Bill knew this young Seminole to be without a peer. He never argued with Osceola in the woods, but was content to do as his friend directed, for he knew that no white man could approximate the American Indian’s native cunning in the forest.
As they progressed the ground became hummocky, and soon developed into a swamp, but this did not cut the speed of the lads in the slightest. They leapt from tuft to tuft of the coarse grass clumps with the agility of mountain goats, and crossed the evil smelling place without wetting a foot.
Although he could not see it, Bill knew that the lake lay somewhere to their left. When Osceola struck off obliquely in that direction, he guessed that they had passed beyond it. And he soon saw that he was right. A few yards farther on the trees ended in a belt of thick and overgrown shrubbery. Just beyond, an unkempt lawn surrounded a hideously ugly house of the cupola-and-mansard-roof variety, painted bright yellow.
“Gosh!” muttered Bill to his guide, “if I lived in that dump, I’d perish of colic!”
Osceola gave him a savage look. “If you don’t keep quiet, we’ll both die with several ounces of lead in our hides! Shut up, now, and turn your mind to what I taught you down in Florida about crossing open spaces on your belly. I’ll go first.”
He dropped prone and wriggled through the grass to a large bush without a sound and at an amazing rate of speed. Bill then did likewise, and was soon at his friend’s side. Their next move was to a belt of rhododendrons which grew close to the yellow house, and in great profusion. Near them was an open window. Bill went to one side, Osceola to the other. They stood up and looked in.
Before them was evidently the living room of the house. At the far end, four men and a woman were seated about a small table, breaking their fast. On a couch across from the window, lay Deborah. She was neither bound nor gagged; she seemed to be asleep.
Bill’s eyes sought Osceola’s. The Chief nodded.
With the ease of the trained athlete, first Bill, then the Seminole, lifted himself swiftly to the window sill and sprang into the room.